Starter For Ten (2 page)

I want to be able to listen to recordings of piano sonatas and know who's playing. I want to go to classical concerts and know when you're meant to clap. I want to be able to 'get' modern jazz without it all sounding like this terrible mistake, and I want to know who the Velvet Underground are exactly. I want to be fully engaged in the World of Ideas, I want to understand complex economics, and what people see in Bob Dylan. I want to possess radical but humane and well-informed political ideals, and I want to hold passionate but reasoned debates round wooden kitchen tables, saying things like 'define your terms!' and 'your premise is patently specious!' and then suddenly to discover that the sun's come up and we've been talking all night. I want to use words like 'eponymous' and 'solipsistic' and 'utilitarian' with confidence. I want to learn to appreciate fine wines, and exotic liqueurs, and fine single malts, and learn how to drink them without turning into a complete div, and to eat strange and exotic foods, plovers' eggs and lobster thermidor, things that sound barely edible, or that I can't pronounce. I want to make love to beautiful, sophisticated, intimidating women, during daylight or with the light on even, and sober, and without fear, and I want to be able to speak many languages fluently, and maybe even a dead language or two, and to carry a small leather-bound notebook in which I jot incisive thoughts and observations, and the occasional line of verse. Most of all I want to read books; books thick as a brick, leather-bound books with incredibly thin paper and those purple ribbons to mark where you left off; cheap, dusty, second-hand books of collected verse, incredibly expensive, imported books of incomprehensible essays from foreign universities.

At some point, I'd like to have an original idea. And I'd like to be fancied, or maybe loved even, but I'll wait and see. And as for a job, I'm not sure exactly what I want yet, but something that I don't despise, and that doesn't make me ill, and that means I don't have to worry about money all the time. And all of these are the things that a university education's going to give me.

We finish off the lager, then things get out of hand. Tone throws my shoes into the sea, and I have to walk home in my socks.

Sixteen Archer Road, like all the other houses on Archer Road, is a maisonette, the diminutive form of the French noun (feminine) maison, literally meaning 'little house'.

QUESTION: Loosely derived from a Hans Christian Andersen story, in which 1948 Powell and Pressburger film does Moira Shearer dance to her death in front of a steam locomotive?

ANSWER: The Red Shoes.

live here with my mum, and if you want to see a really uncomfortable living arrangement, then you can't really beat an eighteen-year-old man and a forty-one-year-old widow in a maisonette. This morning's a case in point. I'm lying under the duvet at 8.30, listening to 'The Breakfast Show' and watching the model aeroplanes dangling from the ceiling. I should have taken them down, I know, but at some point, a couple of years ago, they went from being endearingly boyish to amusingly kitsch, so I left them up there.

Mum comes in, then knocks.

'Morning, sleepyhead. Big day today!'

'Don't you ever knock, Mum?'

The do knock!'

'No, you come in, and then you knock. That's not knocking . . .'

'So? You're not doing anything are you?' She leers.

'No, but . . .'

'Don't say you've got a girl in there with you,' and she tugs at the corner of the duvet. 'Come on, sweetheart, don't be embarrassed, let's talk about it. Come out, come out, whoever you are . . .'

I yank the duvet back over my head. 'I'll be down in a minute . . .'

'It smells in here, actually smells, did you know that?'

'Can't hear you, Mum . . .'

'Smells like boys. What do boys actually do to make a smell like that?'

'Just as well I'm leaving then, isn't it?'

'What time's your train?'

'Twelve-fifteen.'

'So why are you still in bed then? Here; a going-away present for you . . .' and she throws a carrier bag onto the duvet cover. I open it; inside is a see-through plastic tube, the kind you get tennis balls in, but here containing three tightly balled-up pairs of men's cotton slips in red, white and black, the colours of the Nazi flag.

'Mum, you shouldn't have . . .'

'Oh, it's only little.'

'No, I mean I wish you hadn't.'

'Don't be clever, young man. Just get up. You've got packing to do. And open a window please.'

After she's gone, I shake the pants out of the plastic tube onto the duvet, relishing the potent solemnity of the occasion. For, truly, these are The Last Pants My Mother Will Ever Buy Me. The white ones are okay, and I can see the black ones having a certain durability, but red? Are they meant to seem a bit racy or something? To me, red pants are pants that say 'stop' and 'danger'.

But in a bold spirit of adventure, I get out of bed and pull on the red pants. What if they're like The Red Shoes, and I can never take them off? I hope not, because when I check the effect in the wardrobe mirror it looks as if I've been shot in the groin. I pull on yesterday's trousers anyway, and with woolly teeth and sweet-and-sour breath, and still a little woozy from last night's Skol, I head downstairs for breakfast. Then I'll just have a bath, then pack, then go. I can't believe I'm actually leaving. I can't believe that I'm allowed.

But of course the big challenge today is to pack, leave the house and get on the train without Mum saying the words, 'Your dad would have been proud of you.'

A Tuesday night in July, still bright outside, and the curtains are half-drawn so we can see the telly properly. I'm in my pyjamas and dressing gown after a bath, smelling slightly of Dettol, concentrating hard on the Airfix 1/72 scale Lancaster Bomber on a tea-tray in front of me. Dad's just got in from work, he's drinking a can of bitter, and the smoke from his cigarette hangs in the evening sunlight.

'Your starter for ten; Which British sovereign was the last to see active military combat?'

'George V,' says Dad.

'George III,' says Wheeler, Jesus College, Cambridge.

'Correct. Your bonus round begins with a question on geology.'

'Know anything about geology, Bri?'

'A bit,' I say, boldly.

'Crystalline or glassy in appearance, which of the three main classes of rock is formed by the cooling and solidification of molten earth matter ...?'

I know this, I'm sure I know this. 'Volcanic!' I say.

'Igneous,' says Armstrong, Jesus, Cambridge.

'Correct.'

'Nearly,' says Dad.

'Igneous rocks which contain large conspicuous crystals called phenocrysts are said to be what in texture?'

Have a stab. 'Granular,' I say.

Johnson, Jesus, Cambridge says 'Porphyritic?'

'Correct.'

'Almost,' says Dad.

Torphyria's Lover, in which the protagonist strangles his beloved with a braid of her hair. . .' - hang on, I do know this one - 'is a narrative poem by which Victorian poet?' Robert Browning. We did it in English last week. It's Browning, I know it is.

'Robert Browning!' I say, trying hard not to shout.

'Robert Browning?' says Armstrong, Jesus, Cambridge.

'Correct!' and there's applause for Armstrong, Jesus, Cambridge from the studio audience, but we both know that the applause is really for me.

'Bloody hell, Bri, how d'you know that?' says Dad.

'I just know it,' I say. I want to look around and see his face, to see if he's smiling - he doesn't smile much, not after work anyway - but I don't want to look smug, so I just stay still and watch his sunlit reflection in the telly screen. He draws on his fag, then lays his cigarette hand lightly on the top of my head, like a cardinal, smooths my hair down with his long, yellow-tipped fingers, and says;

'You'll be on there one day if you're not careful,' and I smile to myself and feel clever and smart and right about something for a change.

Of course, then I get cocky, and try answering every question, and get every question wrong, but it doesn't matter because for once I got something right, and I know one day I'll get it right again.

I think it's fair to say that I've never been a slave to the fickle vagaries of fashion. It's not that I'm anti-fashion, it's just that of all the major youth movements I've lived through so far, none have really fitted. At the end of the day, the harsh reality is that if you're a fan of Kate Bush, Charles Dickens, Scrabble, David Attenborough and University Challenge, then there's not much out there for you in terms of a youth movement. That's not to say I haven't tried. For a while I used to lie awake and worry that I might be a Goth, but I think that was just a phase. Besides, being a male Goth basically means dressing up as an aristocratic vampire, and if there's one thing that I'm never going to convince as, it's an aristocratic vampire. I just don't have the cheek-bones. Also, being a Goth means that you have to listen to the music, which is unspeakable.

So that was pretty much my only brush with youth culture. I suppose you could say that my own personal sense of style might best be described as informal yet classic. I favour the pleated cotton slack over denim, but dark denim over light. Overcoats should be heavy, long, and with the collar worn up, scarves should be lightly tasselled, black or burgundy, and are essential from early September through to late May. Shoes must be thin-soled and not too pointy, and (very important, this) only black or brown shoes to be worn with jeans.

But I'm also not afraid to experiment, especially now I'm getting my chance to reinvent myself. So with Mum and Dad's old suitcase lying open on the bed, I go through some of the new purchases that I've been saving for this special day. First up is my new donkey jacket, an incredibly dense, black heavy thing that's a bit like wearing a donkey. I'm pretty pleased with it, and the implied mix of artiness and rough-handed labour 'enough of this Shelley, I'm off to tarmac something'.

Then there's the five granddad shirts, assorted shades of white and blue, which I got for Ł1.99 each on a day-trip up to Carnaby Street with Tone and Spencer. Spencer hates these, but I think they're great, especially combined with the black waistcoat, which I got second-hand for three quid from Help the Aged. I've had to hide the waistcoat from Mum, not because she's got anything against The Aged as such, but because she thinks second-hand is common and one step away from picking up food off the floor. What I'm aiming for with this waistcoat/granddad shirt/round spectacles combination is the look of a shell-shocked young army officer with a stammer and a notebook full of poetry who's been sent back from the brutalities of The Front, but is fulfilling his patriotic duty by working on a farm in a remote Gloucestershire village, where he's treated with gruff suspicion by the locals, but secretly loved from afar by the vicar's beautiful, bookish, suffragette daughter, who's into pacifism, vegetarianism and bisexuality. This really is a great waistcoat. And besides, it's not second-hand, it's vintage.

Then there's Dad's brown corduroy jacket. I lay it flat on the bed and fold the arms carefully across the chest. There's a slight tea-stain on the front from a couple of years ago, when I made the mistake of wearing it to a school disco. I know that could be seen as a bit morbid, but I thought it might be a nice gesture, a sort of tribute. I probably should have asked Mum first though, because when she saw me standing in front of the mirror dressed in Dad's jacket, she screamed and threw a mug of tea at me. When she finally realised it was just me she burst into tears and lay on the bed weeping for half an hour, which I have to tell you is a real boost just before a party. And when she'd calmed down, and I actually got to the disco, I had the following conversation with the love-of-my-life that week, Janet Parks.

ME: Slow dance, Janet?

JANET PARKS: Nice jacket, Bri.

ME: Thanks!

JANET PARKS: Where d'you get it?

ME: It's my dad's!

JANET PARKS: But isn't your dad ...dead?

ME: Yep!

JANET PARKS: So you're wearing your dead dad's jacket?

ME: That is correct. So, about that dance?

...and at this point Janet put her hand in front of her mouth, and drifted off and started pointing and whispering in the corner with Michelle Ihomas and Sam Dobson, then went and got off with Spencer Lewis. Not that I bear a grudge about it or anything. Besides, at university, none of this history will matter. No one will know any of this, except me. At university, it will just be a nice corduroy jacket. I fold it up and put it in the case.

Mum comes in, then knocks, and I close the case quickly. She looks teary enough as it is, without Dad's jacket starting her off again. She has, after all, taken the morning off work especially so that she can cry.

'Nearly done then?'

'Nearly.'

'D'you want to take a chip pan with you?'

'No, I'll be fine without, Mum.'

'But what are you going to eat?'

'I do eat things other than chips, you know!'

'No, you don't.'

'Well, maybe I'll start. Anyway, there's always oven-chips.' I look around to see that she's almost smiling.

'You'd better get going, hadn't you?' The train's not for ages yet, but Mum thinks catching a train is a bit like international air travel, and that you should check in four hours before departure. Not that we've been on a plane or anything, but still, it's a wonder that she hasn't made me go and get jabs.

Till go in half an hour,' I say, and there's a silence. Mum says something but can't quite get the words out, which means it's probably along the lines of Dad being proud or something, but she decides to save it for later, and turns and goes. I sit on the suitcase to close it, and then lie on my bed and look round my room for the last time - the kind of moment where, if I smoked, I'd smoke.

I can't believe it's actually happening. This is independent adulthood, this is what it feels like. Shouldn't there be some sort of ritual? In certain remote African tribes there'd be some incredible four-day rites of passage ceremony involving tattooing and potent hallucinogenic drugs extracted from tree-frogs, and village elders smearing my body with monkey blood, but here, rites of passage is all about three new pairs of pants and stuffing your duvet in a bin-liner.